FOOTBALL supporters never leave their club. Football players almost always do.
This is no great disloyalty on the part of the professional sportsman. It is simply life, their life in fact, and if another manager can offer them more money, a bigger stage and in theory improved working conditions, then they are going to say yes to all of that.
Put it this way. If any fan of a Scottish team was offered a deal to live in Munich for three years and be weighed in for going along to back the local club, they would be on that plane as soon as you could say ‘prost.’
Read more: Mark Warburton - Tavernier and Waghorn are committed to Rangers despite contract impasse
A few years back, a Premier League manager at a top four club offered one of his players a not inconsiderable pay rise to extend his stay in Scotland for another two seasons. The player liked where he was, had met and married a local girl and even had a stake in a restaurant. He was admired by the support and would have been in the team every week.
But he said no because a club from the bottom tier of English football, a team with no history and even less glamour, could pay him £3,500-a-week for three whole years, and offered an immediate £60,000 signing on fee.
As the manager told me at the time; “I can’t compete with that and I can’t blame the lad for setting himself up for life.” And this was long before the latest television deal kicked in which is worth something like ten gazillion pounds every season.
The thing is, nobody in this country, from Celtic down, can compete with the the top league and most of the Championship when it comes to what they can afford, and the majority of our own Premiership can be easily outbid by clubs in League Two and lower.
Read more: Rangers striker Martyn Waghorn: Let me play against Celtic
Now this is, of course, as obvious as revealing Christmas will be in December this year; however, it worth reminding ourselves about the difference in the money floating around south of the border as two Rangers players, James Tavernier and Martyn Waghorn, have rejected new and improved deals with the club.
They have done so for no other reason apart from that they know if they get moves back to England then there is a fair chance their wages will double at the very least. Man leaves job to go to another job for a wage rise. It’s hardly high treason.
Waghorn and Tavernier won’t be on buttons at Ibrox and they have two years to go on their current contract, but the reason they have rejected an extended stay is because they will each have one eye on a switch to the land where bang-average players can end up millionaires in the early twenties.
Ask yourself this: what would you do?
The average wage in the Championship last season was estimated to be £325,000-a-year. There are a few at Celtic on more but not as much as you would think, and surely nobody over at Ibrox is raking that amount in.
Go down to League One and it is £69,500 and in the League Two the average drops to £40,000. These will only go up when, or perhaps that should be if, the sums from the broadcasting deal which has just been introduced trickle down the divisions. It’s not even worth considering the Premiership where it is believed the average annual wage is now hovering just below the £2m mark.
Tavernier has talent but is a right-back who can’t defend. His performance in the Scottish Cup final was appalling. Waghorn is a better player with a decent pedigree and yet he, like his team-mate, both now in their mid-twenties, are playing at the biggest club they ever will. But the size of a club does not pay the mortgage or to be exact pay off the mortgage.
The first chance of a move the Championship and they will be off. The same goes for just about every player plying their trade up here. There will always be some happy enough with their lot but our clubs can’t even begin to keep up with the madness in England.
This week Newcastle United put an asking price of £35m on the head of Moussa Sissoko because he had a decent European Championships with France. Last season, the midfielder scored one goal had seven assists and his team were relegated.
I used to work in the North East of England and saw a lot of him. Imagine Peter Grant only with a bit of pace and you’re there.
Arsenal and Tottenham are interested and £35 is nothing to them. So Newcastle are well within their rights to ask for a superstar price of an attacking midfielder who doesn’t score or set up goals because they will probably get it.
And if Waghorn or Tavernier move south, they will get the money they want as well simply because it is there. Whether they are worth it or not doesn’t really matter. A four-year deal in the Championship sets you up for life.
To be perfectly honest, they and anyone else would be mad not to look after themselves.
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